The present invention relates to an ink-jet recording apparatus that is equipped with ink jet nozzles for jetting photo-curable ink droplets and prints on a recording material in an ink-jet recording method.
The apparatus for recording images with UV-curable ink in the ink-jet recording method has merits such as capability of recording images on various kinds of recording media and capability of printing without printing plates, if necessary.
Patent document 1 discloses an art of image recording by an ink-jet recording method using photo-curable ink without providing an ink receiving layer on the surface of a recording material and without deteriorating the image quality due to oozing of ink.
However, the photo-curable ink will cause image fluctuation, uneven print surfaces due to differences in ink quantities, local excessive glossiness, etc. Specifically, this influence is conspicuous in the recording area where a large quantity of ink is used. Usually, when printed, most of water-based or oil-based ink is absorbed into a recording material. However, the printed photo-curable ink remains on the recording paper, and gets hardened in the state that the jetted ink is protruded from the recording paper. This is assumed to be one of the main reasons for the fluctuation of the recorded image surfaces due to the difference in the amount of jetted ink.
Patent document 2 discloses an art of ink-jet image recording using an ink-jet printer with photo-curable ink which suppresses image fluctuation and gives even glossiness to images by using both color ink which contains a colorant and clear ink which contains no colorant to equalize the quantities of inks per unit print area.
Patent Document 1 represents Japanese Non-Examine Patent Publication 2001-310454, and Patent Document 2 represents Japanese Non-Examine Patent Publication 2003-191601.
Meanwhile, in some cases, users want to give desired glossiness levels to images recorded by an ink-jet recording method.
However, the arts of Patent Documents 1 and 2 cannot give arbitrary user-requested glossiness levels to print images even when they are used together although they can give a predetermined glossiness level to print images. Therefore, the arts cannot determine whether or not to use ink containing no colorant to accomplish respective glossiness levels.